Tag Archives: Conservatives

Here’s a weird story for you: Donald Trump’s hedge fund moneybags the Mercers have embraced the odious Milo Yiannopoulos, apparently in an effort to “make conservatism cool.” From Vanity Fair:

In 2012, they invested $10 million in Breitbart and then watched it turn into a blazingly offensive news organ for pro-Trump opinions; with the founding of Milo Inc. this year, they hoped to break into the next generation. “The interesting thing about the Mercers is that they’re the only people on the right who fund anything that’s cultural, which has always been the big weakness of the right and conservatism,” said Internet conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, chalking it up to conservatives simply being bad at understanding culture, much less participating in it.

In this context, Milo Inc. can be viewed as the Mercer version of the conservative movement’s oft-failed attempt to Appeal to the Youths. (Watch any Republican attempt to prove their hipness and the struggle is immediately clear.) In keeping with their goal to construct a parallel cultural universe, the Mercers, according to one person with direct knowledge of their fund-raising activities, were curious to see whether Yiannopoulos could create a media empire that could bring in younger voters, make money, and drive a wedge in the culture war.

I emphasized the “conservatives simply being bad at understanding culture” bit because, isn’t an old white hedge fund billionaire using Milo Yiannopoulos to appeal to “the youth” the very embodiment of that? If you want to sell to the kids, shouldn’t you find a cool person to do that? And is there anything even remotely cool about Milo Yiannopoulos? At all?

I realize I’m a little past my prime, but I do know and work with a lot of young people. Maybe I’m out of touch but Milo strikes me as the exact opposite of cool. His “brand” is self-serving, douchey, attention-whore narcissism — a gay, British Donald Trump, if you will. And yes, his anti-politically correct persona may be in sync with today’s bootstraps conservatism, but will salt of the earth Midwestern kids really look to a fur coat wearing pedophilia apologist like Milo for their cultural cues? Not on your life.

This makes no sense to me, but I’ve been wrong before. And the Mercers are so rich, they can afford to drop $10 million on a bauble like Milo.

Yesterday I was listening to a program called “Indivisible” — one of those “intersection of culture and politics” type shows on NPR. This particular episode focused on millennials and whether they planned to stay engaged in the political process, and of course host Kerri Miller put out a special shout-out to millennial Trump voters because Lord knows, we haven’t heard enough from them.

And in general it was a fairly interesting conversation until we got to the caller from Columbus, Ohio, our millennial Trump voter. You can catch his interview here at the 22 minute mark:

I actually did vote for Donald Trump, I am a millennial, and perhaps one of the sole reasons why was just the coarse ugliness of 21st century activism. Everything from football games to flavors of ice cream has been politicized, and that type of culture is an extreme turnoff to blue collar millennials. And that’s a demographic the Democratic Party does need to pay attention to because there are many of us who do not have college degrees and are blue collar, and in general when you work with your hands it’s really hard to take the advice of people with pink hair seriously.

Cue record-scratch sound effect. Dude, did some chick with pink hair turn you down for a date or something? Poor baby.

So, got that? He voted for Trump just to stick it to the liberals. You sure showed us, boy oh boy! Har har. What a dumb fuck.

I am so sick of these people, I really am. It always goes back to their overwhelming butthurt over some imagined slight, the over-arching inferiority complex of the blue collar conservative. There’s this deeply-seated suspicion of us pointy-headed intellectuals who believe in shit like, you know, science and economics, and who have the temerity to believe that government in the right hands can function as the Founding Fathers designed it to.

But I digress. Host Kerri Miller asked our millennial Trump voter if he planned to disengage from politics, wondered how involved he’d been beyond voting in the first place, at which point I had to change the channel. Take it away:

I wasn’t involved in getting out the vote at all. I’m not affiliated with any political party at all. In fact, I’m even considering shredding my voter registration. The ugliness of the 2016 election, it’s a huge turnoff. There’s a large number of people that were independents and first-time voters, not because they’re registered Republicans or necessarily convinced with Republican principles, but it’s simply they saw no choice between a kind of pretentious chaos and a blue collar work ethic. And in the end Donald Trump despite his background portrayed himself as more sincere and he did not talk down to the blue collar demographic.

Pretentious chaos vs a blue collar work ethic? Yeah, I’ve actually heard that one before. Someone bought the Fox News Kool-ade that liberals are all on the dole while the hardworking, red-blooded, American blue-collar worker goes out and keeps America afloat for the rest of us.

We’ve been fed a lot of that horseshit since the election as the media pursues an endless analysis of the “typical Trump voter” (his sainted name be praised). Now is when I get to link to The Rude Pundit’s perfect response to this nonsense: a righteous rant called, Fuck You, Rural Elitists.

Yes, seriously, fuck you, Mark in Columbus, Ohio. I’m sorry your feelings got hurt by someone with a Yale degree who refused to accept that climate change is a hoax or Ayn Rand was anything more than a writer of bad fiction. Maybe people with college degrees actually know a thing or two, you know? That doesn’t mean that everyone without a college degree is a moron, I know plenty of smart, successful people who never went to college. But let me tell you, they’d be the last people to wear an inferiority complex on their sleeve and demand all the coastal elites worship their Carhartts.

I hear so much of this shit from so many people. Why is looking down on someone with pink hair and a nose ring — or, for that matter, a degree from Stanford or Vanderbilt — any less elitist than calling out someone wearing camo and a farmer’s cap?

And please, stop telling me that I need to “understand” these people. No, I fucking don’t. Maybe they need to understand us. How often does the news media try to explain liberalism to them? I’m not talking Fox News, I’m talking any goddamn news network. Does CNN or ABC or any media outfit ever try to explain “the typical Clinton voter” or “the Trump opposition” to these folks? That might be a start, you know?

I’ve had a lot of people ask me lately what we can do to change peoples’ minds, to “un-brainwash” them (to be impolite), or, as one commenter asked, to come up with some “suggested solutions to get these people to see that they are voting against their, and their families, interests.”

I don’t have a solution. There isn’t one. Study after study shows that people are entrenched in their ideas and giving them facts only makes them dig their heels in further. The problem is not political. The problem these folks have is psychological. They got their feelings hurt by some Democrat with a degree from Yale and now suddenly we all have pink hair and nose rings and should be ignored.

So take the log out of your own eyes, folks. You’re just as elitist and biased as anyone else. Maybe when you lose your health insurance and your corn exports to Mexico go the way of a fart in the breeze you can sit and think about all those kids with hair dyed from the Paas collection and mull over how it’s all their fault. Or maybe you can turn off the TV, crack open a book, and start thinking for yourselves.

The right-wing is losing its shit over Hurricane Matthew because, I dunno, hurricanes hardly happen or something? That seems to be the gist of it, and I don’t get it.

Let’s hear from the Least Trusted Names In News, shall we?

First we have Matt Drudge claiming that hurricane reports have been overplayed “to make an exaggerated point on climate,” and doubting reports from the US National Hurricane Center because, I guess, government bad, arrgle barrgle.

A quick Twitter search reveals dozens of messages posted by Americans living in or near the affected areas that brazenly talk about the opportunity for looting that the hurricane will provide.

“God Please let this hurricane hit us so I can do some looting,” tweeted one user.

“So we looting after the hurricane? I do need a new TV & iPhone and some clothes,” added another.

“Ready for hurricane Matthew to hit so I can start looting,” remarked another.

When asked if they would be looting, one Twitter user responded, “yep, but in white neighborhoods.”

Anonymous Tweets are totally verifiable and legit, you guys! I’m sure the folks trying to delegitimize BLM had nothing to do with such social media posts at all! What idiot buys this obviously ginned-up nonsense? This idiot in charge of the Tennessee Republican Party‘s official Twitter account, for one (apparently not the official TNGOP account, on closer inspection):

When challenged on this obviously racist BS, they upped the ante:

Black kids are just gonna loot, amiright? Just can’t help themselves. /sarcasm. Of course, when white kids do it, they’re just “letting off steam.”

But by all means my absolute favorite Hurricane Matthew conspiracy theory is this one courtesy of The Millennium Report, a cesspool of hoaxes and conspiracy theories that makes Infowars look like the New York Times:

If you’re trying to throw a wrench into the Florida State Government, there’s no more effective way than to geoengineer a hurricane and send it northward into the sun-drenched peninsula. Many chemtrail watchers in the state have already noticed a dramatic uptick in the chemical geoengineering operations statewide. Such a development never bodes well for the region’s highly unpredictable weather.

[…]

At this point anything can happen. Many of the storms that barrel up the Eastern Seaboard seem to have a mind of their own and often surprise with a punch as they head north to highly populated metro areas of the NE. Given the 2016 election cycle, the politicos at the federal level would love to sow seeds of chaos anyway they can in order to create cover for an election theft. For many reasons the Obama Administration really needs a Clinton victory in order to preserve their legacy of utter destruction. Obama, himself, requires such a Democratic win to simply stay out of prison.

Let’s just leave it there, folks.

You know, it’s all fun and games until someone drowns because they either refused to believe the threat was real or they thought it was more important to stay home and protect their stuff from imaginary looters.

I cannot imagine what goes through the minds of a large chunk of Americans.

The young volunteer seemed like any other when she stepped out of her white pickup and into a campaign field office for Russ Feingold’s Senate campaign in Wisconsin on Monday. She said she was a recent transplant from Minnesota, where she claimed she had done phone-banking for Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and Sen. Al Franken. She later declared an interest in women’s health, the environment, and labor issues. On a nondisclosure agreement with the campaign, the blonde woman signed her name as “Allison Moss,” and pledged not to share the campaign’s proprietary data and confidential information private.

But when the Feingold campaign tried to vet its latest recruit—standard practice in the age of opposition research—they could find no record of an ‘Allison Moss.’ A Facebook search revealed an account created days before. Her phone number was registered with a New York area code. Her photo matched those of an activist, Allison Maass, caught last year trying to infiltrate the offices of the Hillary Clinton campaign in Iowa.

“I really like, like, women’s health, the environment, that’s something that I’m passionate about,” ‘Moss’ told a campaign staffer when interviewed about her political interests when she returned to the offices Tuesday. “I know in Wisconsin, it’s a big thing, like, union rights, worker’s rights, it’s such a big thing and something that it’s like sad that people in Wisconsin have to fight for stuff like that but Scott Walker has made it just so hard for them.”

Turns out Allison Maass is part of a right-wing ratfucking group called Campus Reform:

The conservative hydra has so many tentacles, all trying to influence public opinion and manipulate the media. I find it almost funny. Here are some of Allison Maass’ “hot scoops” when she wrote for Campus Reform: “SCSU philosophy professor charged with smuggling rhino horns and elephant ivory,” “U of M Duluth adds LGBTQ minor, gender-inclusive housing,” “Univ. of Minnesota hosts golden condom scavenger hunt,” and”Students protest Redskins name, call fans ‘bigots’ at Sunday’s game.” Oooooh! Seriously?

I can’t imagine what she hoped to find at the campaign offices of Russ Feingold. Artisanal muffins in the break room? Failure to recycle the copy paper? Or perhaps she planned to secretly record a staff meeting, where someone suggested something stupid (as often happens in staff meetings). The idea, no doubt, being to “win the morning” by broadcasting someone’s boneheaded idea to use a candidates’ religion or lack of religion against them in a supreme “gotcha” moment. /eyeroll

I really don’t get these tactics. Seems to require a lot of investment for very little return. And hey, it’s not as if campaigns haven’t figured out that they’re being targeted. Gosh, I’m so old, I remember when dirty tricks extended to dumping bogus “campaign flyers” in the trash, and then pretending to be shocked when they’re “found.” Or dressing your son up as a “union thug” who “snatches” a campaign sign from your little girl, who then turns on the waterworks for the cameras.

Is he advocating armed violence when Trump inevitably loses? God, I hope not.

What about all those years of Republican fearmongering, the Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004, the “THREAT LEVEL: ORANGE” manipulations, all that bullshit to keep people afraid of terrorists? I’m so old, I remember being told that WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE if Barack Obama gets elected (or re-elected).

At one point it was reported that Foster Friess and PayPal’s Peter Thiel gave money early on. Whether they still waste their money on this clown, I have no clue. Especially when the organization’s actual purpose seems to be Making James O’Keefe Feel Important. So, where does the money come from?

And now I have my answer:

O’Keefe portrays himself as a rigorous journalist who is dedicated to furthering “a more ethical and transparent society.” He refuses, however, to be transparent about who is funding him. According to tax records obtained by PRWatch.org, an investigative watchdog group run by the Center for Media and Democracy, in recent years hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Project Veritas have come through a fund in Alexandria, Virginia, called Donors Trust, which specializes in hiding the money trails of conservative philanthropists. In its promotional materials, Donors Trust says that it will “keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues.” The records obtained by PRWatch.org also show that one donor, a conservative political activist in Wisconsin, contributed fifty thousand dollars just before Project Veritas undertook a sting of one of his political enemies—a state senator.

This is so precious. Only “conservative philanthropists” would need a fund that actually specializes in hiding their donation. You know, guys, if you have to hide what you’re doing … maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. That’s what mama always told me, anyway.

Also: as it appears Project Veritas is little more than a dirty tricks operation which will take out your political rival for a fee, I can’t help but wonder why they are given tax-exempt status in the first place. Isn’t tax exempt status reserved for organizations providing a “social good”?

Jane Mayer, who wrote this New Yorker piece, asked a similar question. There are many right-wing organizations professing to provide a “social good” which are, in fact, doing dirty tricks for fun and profit. America Rising Squared is one; rather than provide a social good, it appears to exist purely to intimidate private citizens who engage in social or political activism. No wonder the people financing this form of intimidation want their names kept secret.

The question is, how long can this go on? Sooner or later someone is going to get sued (again). A law will get passed, a loophole will get closed.

Until then, watch your backs. No, no… I’m not talking about the people who James O’Keefe is targeting. The way this inept band of Konservative Keystone Kops keeps tripping over their own shoelaces, they’ll take themselves out. I’m talking about you moneybags on the right who keep financing these ratfucking operations. You’re going after private citizens now, not just politicians. We’ll find out who you are and plaster your names all over Twitter. Bwaahaaa.

From comments, Candy nails something that Mr. Beale and I have discussed at length:

And those companies who decide not to bring jobs to NC because of the bill…. well, that’s just good riddance to liberal businesses they didn’t want there to begin with.

This is exactly right. It’s a type of hippie-punching we see in the South, where our legislatures are dominated by rural right-wingers but our states’ economic drivers are in the liberal urban areas. I don’t think Rep. Susan Lynn or Sen. Mike Bell, both from the hinterlands, give one fat whoop over whether Google Fiber leaves Nashville or if conventions flee our Music City Center. They’d think we’re just getting what we deserve! They would be perfectly happy if every liberal left Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville. They don’t care if our cities lose jobs, hell they applaud it.

These are not ordinary Republicans. They are radical ideologues, drunk on self-righteous indignation at liberal values. They are only too happy when Bruce Springsteen cancels his Greensboro concert and PayPal decides not to expand in Charlotte. This is what they want, after all.

They don’t feel the pain. For that, some Amazon.com fulfillment center in Murfreesboro (home to Sen. Bill Ketron) would have to close. VW would have to leave Chattanooga, and take all of their parts suppliers with them. The Gap distribution center in Gallatin would have to leave. The blowback would have to hit some of these job-strapped rural communities, the very places who elect the Fundiegelical Neanderthals to our legislature in the first place. Don’t punish Nashville, we’re not the ones who elected Susan Lynn to the state House!

But even then, would they change? Hell, no. They’d still blame liberals for “ramming our values down their throats,” even though it’s their own backwards over-reaction causing the pain. Why? Because there is no political solution to a psychological problem. Conservative ressentiment is a real thing. From that old chestnut by Julian Sanchez, gone from the internet but still surviving in the odd excerpt one can occasionally find on the blogosphere:

Even if conservatives retook power, they wouldn’t be able to provide a political solution to a psychological problem, assuming they’re not willing to go the Pol Pot route. At the same time, it signals a resignation to impotence on the cultural front where the real conflict lies. It effectively says: We cede to the bogeyman cultural elites the power of stereotypical definition, so becoming the stereotype more fully and grotesquely is our only means of empowerment.

Just let that thought sink in for a moment. Powerfully true, and unfolding before our very eyes.

Purpose: This bill would restrict bathroom use in public schools and colleges based on the sex listed on one’s birth certificate. The state faces a $1 billion federal penalty for Title IX gender discrimination violation.

Status: This had been set aside to summer study but was revised by a House committee. It will next be considered by the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday.

I haven’t read either the House of Senate version of these bills, and I probably should. The legislation was written to attack transgendered people, but it seems to me that it affects everyone. What about caregivers of the elderly and disabled, parents of small children, etc.? If you’re going to a game or sporting event at a public college and your wheelchair-bound parent, spouse, child, whatever needs to use the restroom, what do you do if you’re not the same gender? I think about this stuff because my mom was in a wheelchair for a few years before she died. She still went out and participated in community activities, and that meant using public restrooms in public places. Yes, I’ve changed adult diapers. What if it had been my dad? Which bathroom would we use? Or would we have had to shove the wheelchair in the bathroom and say, “you’re on your own, pops!”

Parents of young children deal with this issue all the time. Dads take their toddler girls into the men’s room, moms take their young boy children into the women’s restroom. Nobody has freaked out, near as I can tell. I see little boys in public restrooms with mom, I’ve managed to survive. What’s mom supposed to do with her 2-year-old now? Break the law?

What I don’t want is to be using the public bathroom and have someone with a full beard walk in, and not know if this is a man with a creepy bathroom fetish or some poor transgendered person forced to use the women’s restroom. What am I supposed to do, ask this person to drop trou so I can check under the hood? No thanks, Republicans. That’s waaay above my pay grade. This was a ridiculous “answer” to a non-existent “problem.”

Since Governor Pat McCrory signed HB2 into law last month, well over 1,000 jobs have been moved out of state, and over 100 companies, including Facebook, Apple and Stop Pack, have expressed concern or anger, warning they may move or cancel plans to expand, costing the state millions of dollars. In addition to that, by not hosting the 2017 NBA All-Star game, the state stands to lose even more. It is uncertain the exact figure, but in 2014, the All-Star game in New Orleans generated $106.1 Million and in 2015, New York generated approximately $195 million in economic activity.

On Sunday, Bruce Springsteen cancelled his concert in Greensboro because of North Carolina’s controversial new LGBT bill stating, “With deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.”

And while I concede some of this may be a result of state actions clarifying guidelines on transgender issues, I think most of it stems from an increasingly panicked conservative movement, which has watched helplessly as religion continues to die as America’s dominant cultural force. I don’t for a second think anyone really cares which bathroom people use. I do think conservatives are reaching the bottom of the barrel, however. Their key issues used to be abortion and gay rights and prayer in public schools. These were the issues that kept the donations flowing and the mailing lists refreshed. But those issues have pretty much been decided already. Those battles are, for the most part, over. The number of issues which will keep Aunt Edna sending in her $10 check to the FRC, or keep Uncle Elmer voting Republican, or make for a tasty election-year soundbite are running thin. We’ve gone from the big stuff to the increasingly ridiculous. 10 Commandments statues at the courthouse? Umm, okay, maybe that’s important to someone. Or an increasingly small group of someones (personally, I could give a shit. If that floats your boat, no skin off my nose, but it doesn’t mean jack shit).

But now we’re talking who uses what bathroom? How is this not an example of desperation? Of a movement which has completely run out of ideas?

We’re finally hearing from the 2016 Republican Presidential candidates about the mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs:

Yes, Mike. You’re the real victim here. It’s especially tragic for pro-lifers, who have been spreading lies about “baby parts” and other monstrosities that Planned Parenthood supposedly perpetuated. Really a tragedy for you, not the patients and staff who were there for birth control and STD testing and other regular healthcare services.

Is there nothing funnier than a bunch of Fundiegelicals getting all butthurt over the absence of a snowflake on their coffee cup? I think not! What I really love is that these useless idiots think they have “pranked” Starbucks by forcing baristas to write Merry Christmas on their cups, while they continue to pay $8 for a latte. Hilarious.

All of this fauxtrage has been ginned up by one Joshua Feuerstein, who posted a coffee cup rant on Facebook. But who is Joshua Feuerstein? Let’s ask the Great Gazoogle:

Former evangelical pastor proposes fighting LGBT rights with assault weaponsTalking head Joshua Feuerstein implies the Second Amendment is the best way to combat homosexuality

Taking a note from the disgraced California attorney who recently proposed a measure to shoot all the gays, a former evangelical pastor has recommended using guns to fight ever-expanding LGBTQ civil rights across the country. Joshua Feuerstein, a Facebook personality known for his vitriolic talk radio-style tirades, implied earlier this month that the Second Amendment is the best protection from “bigoted” anti-discrimination measures and legalized same-sex marriage.

“They are coming after our First Amendment constitutional rights,” Feuerstein said. “This is one pastor that will not bow. Why? Because my First Amendment right is guaranteed by my Second Amendment right. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen.”

The closely zoomed video backs up at the mention of the Second Amendment, so that Feuerstein can reveal he’s holding what appears to be an assault rifle, which he brandishes close to his face. He then urged his viewers to “stand up and say ‘no more.’”

He gave an altar call, and the altar call he gave Brother Wayne? it was ridiculous. I ain’t never heard nothing about it in my life. He was talking about girls looking for daddies, and girls never experiencing the daddy figure in their life. And he had a whole altar call, Brother Wayne, just for teenage girls. I couldn’t imagine it. He was walking around praying for these girls, touching ’em and feeling ‘em and everything else and I just couldn’t believe it, Brother Wayne, and I checked it in my spirit. I checked it and I felt it in my spirit that this was not of God.

That night I came to Brother Wayne, did I not? I sure did, and I said I just feel like God is not in this. You know, every time I see his big fat head on Facebook I just feel like, it’s not of God! Christians if you’re out there, if you’re listening, you need to jump on this bandwagon. Because this bandwagon is going straight to heaven, and the bandwagon of Josh Feuerstein? Well, you know where that’s going.

All of this needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt — we don’t know anything about these people except that they say at the outset that their aim is to run Feuerstein out of town. Still, I think it’s just hilarious that even other church people despise this guy.

Even more disturbing are allegations that Feuerstein mishandled donations from a GoFundMe page that were supposed to go towards camera equipment.

There appears to be a lot hinky about this guy. He certainly likes the spotlight and our mainstream media seems happy to give him the attention he craves while saying nothing about the more sketchy elements in his background. So, thanks for playing along, liberal media! This is how the fringe gets mainstreamed.